Another day, another period to put up with spoiled children crashing into me in the corridors. At least dinner was good last night -- seaweed salad and sushi and Kirin Ichiban and good conversation with an old friend and colleague.

I checked ONE of the stores here yesterday, one of those that every hotel of any size has, and yes, they DO sell condoms. I was starting to wonder if folks who stayed here for the "resort" aspect of the joint ever...well, the image is to neat and clean and All-American....

This is not at all my idea of a vacation destination. Good deal that the city is paying for it.

The idea of being pampered, of going somewhere "safe" (versus the Wilderness where safety can't be guaranteed and there is no money back if you fuck up and get eaten by a grizzly) and where you don't have to pick up after yourself isn't weighed with the factor that there are probably more predators in the resort than in the wild and if you do an ultra violet survey of the room and it's contents you'll find it a veritable petri dish of nasty germs and virtually every surface has signs of sperm from sloppy former users of the room.

I'm a fan of Faulkner, what can I say? And that sentence is nothing compared to what Jessie Weston cranked out in her classic examination of Arthur and the Holy Grail in From Ritual to Romance, which left readers breathless for more than one reason. :)

Circular breathing. Is that like breathing the same air over and over? Wouldn't all the oxygen get depleted out? Wouldn't the poor air get all pooped from running around in circles all day? -- I know I do. And lemme tell ya, there's nothing worse than pooped air. I remember one time up at the Legion Hovel Big Clem got some of that pooped air and it danged near did him what for. It's a sad story, that of Big Clem -- he's only four feet three inches tall and built like a straw broom -- and the pooped air, and I can't tell it all here. But just take it from me that you don't want to get involved with any pooped air. The gals 'n' guys of the Legion had prit near ta give up on Clem before they pulled him through.

I'll refrain from telling you how I used to...college...young women...trumpet...me teaching them...never mind. Suffice to say that trumpeters have an advantage over guitar players because trumpeters learn to double and triple tongue.

As the world's greatest triple-tonguer, and world-class swordsman, and general all-around wrangler, freebooter and jovial freethinker and leader of men's souls, I recommend to you whole heartedly the film Don Juan de Marco, a real soul-toucher.

You are free to piss in Clinton's coffee. You are free to poop in Amos's soup. You are free! Free! Free to do whatever you want to do! You need not ask permission, you are free!! You can run down the streets of Toronto stark naked shouting "WOO WOO WOO!" at the top of your voice. You can snatch the hat off an OPP and tinkle in it. You can blow your nose in a lady's feather boa.

Of course, you might get arrested, punched in the nose, and have even more unpleasant things happen to you. But you are FREE!!!

Well, I would have second thoughts about any guest who makes a habit of giving permission to people he doesn't know real well to poop in other people's soups, Stilly. It's like the guy who can't answer the old riddle about the difference between drapes and bum-wad. You don't want to ask him over.

Like I told Stilly, Mom, I'm tired of thin women in spike-heel patent leather boots walking around with grossly overweight men and people in cheap fake cowboy hats and mostly, Mom, I'm tired of wannabees. I can't escape the sound of fountains and waterfalls and they won't let me tickle a catfish out of the fake stream (they're real -- and decent-sized -- catfish and carp) and clean it and nail its head to a post to skin it like Willy Nelson said to do and make a fire and cook it either. And the building with a sign on it for Gibson guitars and mandolins sells cheap souvenirs!!! and has plastic statues of two horses standing on their hind legs holding what I think are ukuleles and wearing straw hats.

Perhaps Rapaire is becoming a Shatner -- that sub-race of twisted souls who lurk between worlds, using their dark powers to make people try to take dumps in the wrong places and at inconvenient times? They cause accidents throughout the world. He may be showing early symptoms.

In many countries of the world, children are bullied during their potty-training years with threats that the Shatner will get them if they don't practice regularly.

You can come catch fish in my stream in my back yard, but I don't think I'd want to eat them. Too much urban chemical activity in the area. They'd probably taste better, though, cause they eat natural fish food.

I tossed a dead bird down onto the stream bank yesterday, food for one of our displaced foxes or coyotes. Food courtesy my dogs, who caught an apparently slow dove. I suppose I could have kept it and eaten it, but didn't feel like learning how to cook one medium-sized bird. Reminds me of the essay in Mama Makes Up Her Mind about eating road kill--late model, Florida tags, intersection of a road and a state highway. This one would be "back yard bird, Edgecliff Village, semi-plucked but no punctures, slobbery with slight bruising."

I am glad Rapaire is goin' home. Not that Nashville isn't a real nice place or anything. It's an excellent place to drive through without stopping while on your way to someplace else. So is Memphis. So is Gatlinburg. Heck, so is the whole state of Tennessee for that matter.

It's a very pretty state, BWL. And if they ever iron it out flat that drive from east to west on the Interstate will actually look like it feels--three times the distance that it shows on the map. All of those ups and downs and you realize the map doesn't begin to express the distances involved.

Those eastern hardwood forests are always easy on the eyes. And places like Nashville are handy for a hotel, a quick bite, or at least a place to empty the bladder and fill up your drink cup with ice and water.

Actually, I lied. Nashville is a great place to drive through on the way to someplace else. Memphis is never good to drive through unless it's between midnight and 6:00 AM. Gatlinburg is a blight on the face of humanity. The rest of the state is okay, I guess, but I'm still glad I usually traverse it from north to south or south to north so it's all over with in about two hours.

Tell me about Gatlinburg. I worked one summer at Sugarlands Visitor Center, just outside of town. Gatlinburg is awful. That whole strip of towns from Sevierville and Pigeon Forge on through is a huge tourist trap.

So is the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. I can say this because now I'm back on my own computer in my own house and not using the GOR&CC's supplied connection.

I did not care for the GOR&CC. Next years the Conference is at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. I haven't been to the part of the world since 1968, before the Grand Ol' Opry moved outa the barn (you oughts see it now!). I may go. Maybe.

Off to work. See this. It was my "Good Morning!" phone call yesterday.

Seems like all the shit happens while you're out of town, Rapaire. Do you think all the perverts in Pocatello have a website where they can post messages like, "Mike the Librarian's out of town! Let's go to the library and do something fucked up!"?

I'm having a sign made that reads "Check Your Pistols And Perversions At the Circulation Desk."

The mother and two grandmothers went outside to see if they could find out where the dude went. It was good that they didn't catch him -- I'd rather have the headline that was in today's paper than one that reads "Librarians Lynch Pervert".

One of my bookmarks is for this Shakespeare quotation site. Its description on my computer is "William Shakespeare Quotations". I just happened to glance at that description while looking for another bookmark and could have sworn it said "William Shatner Quotations". Maybe it's time for a vacation from Mudcatland.

Well at a quantum level, you could be transporting your attention to Little Hawk's computer and seen his similar bookmark, you know; there's one way to tell. If your mental quotient of mass (experientially defined as the resistance of attention to acceleration) increased markedly when placing attention on the bookmark, it was Little Hawk's. If not, it was just fatigue and un petit pête de crane.

I could use one of those guns about now. Take out the bulldozer driver in one shot. They're knocking down the woods across the road from me to build ugly little dwellings on puny little yards for people who are so stupid that they'd move into a community ruled by an unelected government called a Home Owners Association.

Why would you want to break down a castle door? Why not just knock politely and ask to be let in? People are usually pretty nice if you ask politely, especially if it's raining or something and you just want a place to keep dry, even if it's just under the eaves or in the barn. But you have to remember to close the barn door when you leave and it's nice to maybe help with the milking or hog slopping or stall mucking-out. Besides, doors can be expensive and if you break one down you'll have to pay for it, just as if you broke a window throwing rocks or playing baseball. I know that if I owned a castle and someone broke down my door I wouldn't be happy about it. I'd probably call the cops, because breaking down some else's door isn't very nice.

I don't know about breaking down your own door. That might not be impolite, but it could certainly be stupid. Unless you forgot your keys, of course. Then you could break down your own door because you had to get into the house and maybe there wasn't anyone inside to let you in. So that might be okay, but it was still pretty dumb to lock your keys in your house.

Sugar in the gas tank works as well as anything. Doc did that, along with cutting down the billboards.

The trees, alas, are gone. It's bare-naked out there, we can see through to the boulevard on the other side of the strip of land. And all of what they're stirring up is kicking my allergies into high gear.

Why, yes! Invite them in for a cup of tea. Just don't forget the hemlock.

I still haven't fully recovered from my run-in with the right-of-way maintenance guys from our local power company almost a year ago. They are supposed to be able to clear back twelve feet or so from directly under the power lines. They drove their machinery at least forty feet onto my property, smashed or cut down my wife's privet bushes and did diddle-dee-shit about cleaning up after themselves. Then they came to the back side of the property, which is where our power line actually comes in, and commenced using chainsaws to clear a path through some of my most productive blueberry bushes. They stopped when a very angry Bee-dubya screamed at one of them which almost prompted a physical altercation.

Every time I drive by one of their pieces of equipment on the roadside I get an urge to monkeywrench it.